Dust Devil (1992)

Note; As of 04/03/2025, I have received several behind the scenes photos from John Cormican himself, who I also conducted an interview with that I will be transcribing on the blog very soon! I would like to thank Cormican for being so gracious with his time and helping out!

The makeup effects for Richard Stanley's Dust Devil were supplied by The Dream Machine, a fledgling company set up by John Cormican, a veteran of Bob Keen's Image Animation.

Cormican's team on Dust Devil included other Image Animation alumni like Simon Sayce, Geoff Portass (responsible for the Pinhead makeups in Hellraiser), and Chris Halls (aka Chris Cunningham, future director of many Aphex Twin music videos).

The titular 'dust devil', a shapeshifting demon only known as 'Hitch' in the script, had scenes where his visage took on a more bestial appearance. Cormican explained, 'Hitch is a shapeshifter, but we don't actually do any big changing thing on him with bladders. We have just a subtle prosthetic makeup that Chris designed. It simply suggests that he's a bit more fluid than a human, that his skin is not as solid or stable as yours or mine'.

Hitch's demonic face was a six-piece makeup, that took six hours to apply on actor Robert Burke. Halls elaborated, 'He looks similar to the creatures out of Vamp or Lost Boys. That's what I was aiming for, more than a werewolf. The prosthetics just slightly bring out his cheeks and his forehead; it's the teeth and the lenses that give him the look'.

Several face and chest makeups were made for the morgue corpses, applied on real performers as they would come to life in Dust Devil's dream sequences.

Most elaborate of the morgue corpse makeups was the peeled face design, realized as a prosthetic (with fake eyes) that was worn over the performer's face.

Cormican applying the peeled face zombie makeup. 

 

The film's violent scenes required several props to be made, such as severed body parts (including a full set of fingers and a heart), a charred skeleton and an ox dummy head.

Moo! 

 

Hitch's demise - a shotgun blast to the head - required a dummy head (no doubt rigged with explosive charges) for the actual explosion, and a blood pump for the shots of Hitch's headless body writhing about, blood gushing from the neck. Cormican had provided a similar effect on Stanley's previous film Hardware, as he recalled to Fangoria;

'Richard likes his blood, but there are times when he says more and times when he says less, which is unlike him. On Hardware, it was always more, more, more; that's why when I came out (on Dust Devil), I got a great big compressor and pumps and gallons of blood. I thought, I don't want to disappoint him again'.

Not a particularly FX-heavy shot, but the caption makes it 

 

Cormican's team also had to construct an animatronic puppet for the shot where Hitch has taken on the appearance of a mummified corpse. The puppet was mechanized to allow the head and arms to move, as the one behind the scenes shot of the armature shows.

The mummy Hitch puppet's armature. 

 

At various points in Dust Devil, Hitch's face resembles a werewolf-like creature, realized as a pullover mask. According to Cormican, the simple method was done 'Only because of budget restrictions. We'd like nothing more than to do a complete animatronic head'.

It seems that at least two Hitch-demon masks were made by Cormican's team; a scowling mask with a closed mouth, and a snarling one with a fanged mouth; the eye lenses also appear different and I suspect could be swapped on each mask.

Stanley elaborated on the Hitch monster's design; 'I didn't want to have onscreen transformations. I wanted to imply that Hitch was somebody who had this power over reality, but I've kept his slips very minor.

There are a few moments where he turns up looking very, very strange, such as when he jumps on the outside of a landrover during a sandstorm and we see him with a full snout, fur and pointed ears. But I wanted to think that he could be any animal, that he could turn into an owl or a wolf. We've tried to bas the makeup on a combination of many animals, so he could have fur and feathers at once if he was caught between phases.'

The demon Hitch mask in a promotional still; notice that it is the scowling mask, but with the snarling mask's eye lenses. 

 

The demon Hitch mask during shooting; the snarling mask is more or less never seen in the film outside of an extreme close-up shot of the eyes. 

 

Sources:

• Fangoria #117 'Dust Devil in the Wind' by Mark Salisbury